Dunkin' Donuts Helps Wounded Vets, Duckworth to Help VA Use New Media to Reach Vets, Coming Healthcare Crisis?, Veterans Corps Bill
The Boston Globe | Dunkin' will help vets with Iced Coffee Day - "Dunkin' Donuts, the Canton-based chain of coffee-and-baked-goods shops, announced an Iced Coffee Day on April 21 that aims to benefit injured veterans. On Iced Coffee Day, the price for a small cup of iced coffee will be reduced to 50 cents at participating shops, the chain said; for every small iced coffee purchased on this day, Dunkin' Donuts said it will donate five cents to benefit Homes for Our Troops, a nonprofit organization that builds specially adapted homes for severely injured veterans." For more, visit their special website or their Facebook event page.
Honolulu Advertiser | VA nominee Duckworth plans online outreach to veterans - Duckworth told senators yesterday that: "To become a 21st-century organization, the DVA (Department of Veterans Affairs) will have to change some past methods. It's no longer enough to hand out brochures at demobilization ceremonies. We must develop social networking strategies, use nontraditional outlets such as blogs, and employ the wide variety of new media available to get the message of available benefits to our veterans."
GOOD | The Memory War - "We might be on our way out of Iraq but things are just starting to pick up in Afghanistan. With record-high number of veteran suicides and rising rates of PTSD and clinical depression in every branch of the armed forces, is the nation headed for a mental-healthcare crisis?"
Navy Times | Senate OKs creation of Veterans’ Corps - "A program in which veterans would volunteer to help active-duty members make the transition to civilian life has moved a step closer to reality with the Senate’s March 26 vote to more than triple the number of national service jobs. The bill, HR 1388, authorizes a new Veterans’ Corps, whose success would be measured by the number of veterans who are helped to go to college or find jobs, the number of military families provided assistance, and the number of homeless veterans who find housing."
Salon Investigation: Army Doctors Pressured Not to Diagnose PTSD, Senate Armed Services Committee Refuses to Look Into Matter
And now, back to reality.
After my glowing post yesterday, nodding to the many Army generals nudging military culture into the 21st century by admitting that anyone can and does get PTSD, it doesn't take long for things to come crashing back down to reality.
For more than a year he's been seeking treatment at Fort Carson for a brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, the signature injuries of the Iraq war. Sgt. X is also suffering through the Army's confusing disability payment system, handled by something called a medical evaluation board. The process of negotiating the system has been made harder by his war-damaged memory. Sgt. X's wife has to go with him to doctor's appointments so he'll remember what the doctor tells him.
But what Sgt. X wants to tell a reporter about is one doctor's appointment at Fort Carson that his wife did not witness. When she couldn't accompany him to an appointment with psychologist Douglas McNinch last June, Sgt. X tucked a recording device into his pocket and set it on voice-activation so it would capture what the doctor said. Sgt. X had no idea that the little machine in his pocket was about to capture recorded evidence of something wounded soldiers and their advocates have long suspected -- that the military does not want Iraq veterans to be diagnosed with PTSD, a condition that obligates the military to provide expensive, intensive long-term care, including the possibility of lifetime disability payments.
And, as Salon will explore in a second article Thursday, after the Army became aware of the tape, the Senate Armed Services Committee declined to investigate its implications, despite prodding from a senator who is not on the committee. The Army then conducted its own internal investigation -- and cleared itself of any wrongdoing.
Fort Carson, you may recall, was the site of a major scandal in 2006-2007 when first the Colorado Springs Independent (CSIndy) and CBS News reported in July 2006 that some troops were receiving abuse rather than proper treatment for their reintegration issues and/or PTSD after returning from Iraq. In December 2006, NPR broke the story even wider; Senate investigations followed.
For a look at today's brewing scandal, be sure to listen to the tape, and read the entire Salon piece, which contains a rough transcript of the conversation and much more information. The work is so important, that rather than quote any more from it, I would urge everyone to read it in full. Tomorrow, Salon will run a companion piece with more details on this developing controversy. Be sure to keep an eye out for that one, too.
In February, de Yoanna and Benjamin presented a series of reports on related problems at Fort Carson. Once your blood pressure is in check after reading their current reportage, be sure to check in with their "Coming Home" series.
I promise you it won't make you feel better.
If you are aware of a soldier who has served or is serving in the Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts and is having trouble getting a PTSD diagnosis or proper benefits, please contact Mark Benjamin at mbenjamin (at) salon (dot) com.
Click on 'Article' link below tags for related Fort Carson posts...
Sage Markers of Military Culture Change: Generals Continue Coming Forward to Share Their Stories of PTSD and Suicide
Wisdom. What is it?
Something forged out of experience, certainly. Usually that wisdom-forging insight stems from a walk down a challenging or difficult path, and combat experience would surely qualify here, one requiring either cognitive or physical effort (or both) to overcome.
Cognitive elements might include grappling with the events of one's own life as well as contemplating the greater meaning of those experiences. This avenue to wisdom will also eventually lead to a consideration of the greater forces on one's life or the existence of a higher power.
And what would the value of all of this wisdom work be if its product is not shared with others -- no matter the cost?
Cited in Richard Hawley Trowbridge's doctoral dissertation, "The Scientific Approach of Wisdom," [doc] social psychologist and Rutgers University professor Deirdre A. Kramer distinguishes five specific functions of wisdom: (a) finding solutions to problems that confront the self; (b) advising others; (c) management of social institutions; (d) life review; and (e) spiritual introspection.
One function, as noted above, of wisdom concerns its responsibility and ties to social institutions. Again, what benefit would wisdom have if not shared with larger society through organized (and other) means? Those in positions of power to enlighten and broaden the knowledge and understanding base of society and its institutions, especially when the activity might threaten one's career or image, are to be applauded.
Those who do this work are our modern sages and heroes.
When I say hero, it is as described by Franciscan priest and writer Richard Rohr in his book, Quest for the Grail:
The American Plains warriors, according to ancient legend, used to say in the morning: "It's a good day to do great things." To be able to say that and mean it was a magnificent ambition. Such an aspiration stirs something deep in the heart of any [striving] to be a hero. ...
A hero, for the record, is not a saint, much less a god.
In the great mythologies and legends, the hero is always an ordinary human being, with at least one tragic flaw. A hero is one who simultaneously keeps an eye on himself and a goal beyond himself.
Four Army generals of late have become my heroes.
The latest, Army Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, entered this category last week when he shared his personal experience with the stigma of suicide after his son's 2003 suicide. In his efforts, which must be personally and professionally trying, we see the heroic elements of wisdom at work: desiring to find solutions to problems and advising others of that quest, etc.
More on his story in extended, but first a clip from a March 25, 2009, CNN interview with Graham:
Graham joins the ranks of at least four generals since November 2008 who have found the strength to try to destigmatize PTSD and/or suicide in the Army; Lily Casura of Healing Combat Trauma made note of the other three last month, and their stories and interviews are also shared in extended as well.
Click on 'Article' link below tags for more...
In educational interest, article(s) quoted from extensively.
In November 2008, Major General David Blackledge came forward to speak about his PTSD; his story literally helping others to find the strength to come forward to seek help as well. John J. Kruzel, Armed Forces Press Service:
Army Maj. Gen. David Blackledge is doing his part to reduce the social stigma attached to seeking mental health treatment for war-related stress. The general suffered from post-traumatic stress after surviving a near-death experience during his first deployment to Iraq in 2004. Now he willingly shares his tale of recovery and hopes his example will help others in dealing with war's invisible wounds.
"I felt it was critical that we had senior leaders experiencing [post-traumatic stress] come forward," Blackledge, the Army's assistant deputy chief of staff for mobilization and reserve issues, said in an interview at the Pentagon last week.
The wife of a military member suffering from war trauma used Blackledge's story to spur on her spouse to seek treatment, Blackledge said. "She said, ‘My husband was suffering from this, and when I showed him the article in the paper about you coming forward, he said that if a two-star general can get help, then maybe I can too,'" he said. ...
Last month, Gen. Carter Ham and Brig. Gen. Gary Patton spoke out about their own PTSD. They talked to CNN's Barbara Starr:
Gen. Carter Ham was among the best of the best — tough, smart and strong — an elite soldier in a battle-hardened Army. At the Pentagon, his star was rising. In Iraq, he was in command in the north during the early part of the war, when the insurgency became more aggressive. Shortly before he was to return home, on Dec. 21, 2004, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a mess hall at a U.S. military base near Mosul and killed 22 people, including 14 U.S. troops. Ham arrived at the scene 20 minutes later to find the devastation.
When Ham returned from Mosul to Fort Lewis, Wash., in February 2005, something in the affable officer was missing. Loud noises startled him. Sleep didn't come easily. "When he came back, all of him didn't come back. … Pieces of him the way he used to be were perhaps left back there," says his wife, Christi. "I didn't get the whole guy I'd sent away."
Today, Ham, 56, is one of only 12 four-star generals in the Army. He commands all U.S. soldiers in Europe. The stress of his combat service could have derailed his career, but Ham says he realized that he needed help transitioning from life on the battlefields of Iraq to the halls of power at the Pentagon. So he sought screening for post-traumatic stress and got counseling from a chaplain. That helped him "get realigned," he says.
"You need somebody to assure you that it's not abnormal," Ham says. "It's not abnormal to have difficulty sleeping. It's not abnormal to be jumpy at loud sounds. It's not abnormal to find yourself with mood swings at seemingly trivial matters. More than anything else, just to be able to say that out loud."
The willingness of Ham, one of the military's top officers, to speak candidly with USA TODAY for the first time about post-traumatic stress represents a tectonic shift for a military system in which seeking such help has long been seen as a sign of weakness.
For Army Brig. Gen. Gary S. Patton, the dreams are the worst. Patton, now the Joint Staff’s director for personnel, served as a brigade commander with the 2nd Infantry Division in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2004 and 2005. As a colonel, he commanded 4,100 soldiers who deployed from Korea to Iraq, and then redeployed to Fort Carson, Colo.
“It was a very tough neighborhood,” he said during an interview. “It was a very active terrorist threat.”
Patton calls the dreams “sleep disturbances,” and said that was one of the reasons he sought mental health help. “I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a loud explosion going off in my head,” he said. “Not only do you have the sound, but the recreation of the smell and taste that you get from being right there in an [improvised explosive device] explosion.
“That effect has diminished, but it’s disturbing nonetheless.”
One of the dreams centers on Army Spc. Robert Oliver Unruh. Patton was observing actions on the north side of Ramadi when Unruh, a 25-year-old combat engineer, was hit in the torso by small-arms fire.
“We put him in an armored vehicle to [medically evacuate] him to our aid station,” the general said. “I was the last person to talk to Specialist Unruh because he died before my eyes there.”
Calling the sleep disturbances dreams doesn’t really give them their due. The incidents unroll as they happened, he said. He smells the cordite, he feels the blood, he hears the conversations, and he sees the young specialist die.
Patton wears a bracelet with Unruh’s name on it as part of remembering the 69 soldiers from his brigade who paid the ultimate sacrifice over a year in Iraq.
“No one is immune from the stresses of combat,” Patton said. “It affects everyone, in all specialties.” ...
Patton found that counseling and conversation helped. “One of the best things for me is just communication with others who went through the same thing,” he said. “Our family members, who love us dearly, have a hard time relating to what we went through. My greatest relief was just through talking over the experiences with others who had been there. I gained coping skills just by talking to other soldiers.”
Counseling helps, but there are other treatments as well. The disorder often comes in tandem with traumatic brain injuries and military and Veterans Affairs researchers continue to make progress in treatments.
But this won’t help if personnel don’t seek aid. “My advice is to go seek mental health care as you would for a physical ailment,” Patton said.
Last week another general, the fourth to discuss sensitive topics not usually discussed so openly by such high-ranking military officers, shared how depression and suicide took the life of his own son. Yochi J. Dreazen of the Wall Street Journal:
Maj. Gen. Mark Graham is on the frontlines of the Army's struggle to stop its soldiers from killing themselves. Through a series of novel experiments, the 32-year military veteran has turned his sprawling base here into a suicide-prevention laboratory.
One reason: Fort Carson has seen nine suicides in the past 15 months. Another: Six years ago, a 21-year-old ROTC cadet at the University of Kentucky killed himself in the apartment he shared with his brother and sister. He was Kevin Graham, Gen. Graham's youngest son.
After Kevin's suicide in 2003, Gen. Graham says he showed few outward signs of mourning and refused all invitations to speak about the death. It was a familiar response within a military still uncomfortable discussing suicide and its repercussions. It wasn't until another tragedy struck the family that Gen. Graham decided to tackle the issue head on.
"I will blame myself for the rest of my life for not doing more to help my son," Gen. Graham says quietly, sitting in his living room at Fort Carson, an array of family photographs on a table in front of him. "It never goes away."
Suicide is emerging as the military's newest conflict.
The article also looks at some of the factors the Army believes are driving the increasing rate of suicide:
Teasing out the underlying causes is difficult, since it is impossible to fully understand just what prompts someone to commit suicide. Military officials point out that one-third of the soldiers who took their own lives last year had never been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, though they say that the soldiers might still have felt the stresses of constant training and pending overseas tours.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other senior Pentagon officials believe that the suicide rate is being pushed higher by the Army's rising divorce rate. Repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan are pushing Army relationships to the breaking point, and many military marriages are buckling under the strain.
Some Pentagon officials believe that military drug and alcohol use is also contributing to the increase in suicides. Growing numbers of soldiers take antianxiety medication like Prozac and Xanax after they return to the U.S., and some commanders worry that the combination of drugs and alcohol is upsetting many soldiers' emotional states.
The poor national economy also adds to the strains facing many soldiers and their loved ones. Foreclosures in towns with large military facilities are rising at several times the national average, and hundreds of military families have lost their homes in recent months. The civilian spouses in many families are also struggling to find work, adding to the financial pressures facing modestly paid military personnel.
Army officials acknowledge that many soldiers are reluctant to seek help because of the stigma around mental-health issues. A survey last year by the American Psychiatric Association found that 75% of military personnel felt that asking for assistance would reduce their chances for promotion. Others worried about appearing weak in the eyes of their peers.
It's vital for leaders to begin leading on this issue. They must continue to find ways to engage in these heroic examples of wisdom-sharing for a higher purpose of bringing relief to the struggles of those serving below them.
It should have come sooner. More could have been done to help save those who have been struggling and lost all of these years. But, the change in openness on this topic is greatly welcomed.
In previous wars, there was very little discussion of the psychological aspects that flow out of the experience of combat; stories of the personal effects of combat stress and PTSD coming from the higher ranks were virtually nonexistent. Many years after the Vietnam War ended, with the steady stream of its veterans seeking help for their symptoms at the VA, discussion of PTSD finally began to emerge.
In 1980, the condition was officially recognized when it was included in the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. At the opposite end of the decade, in 1989, the VA's National Center for PTSD was created by Congressional mandate (PL 98-528) to "address the needs of veterans with military-related PTSD ... with the ultimate purpose to improve the well-being, status, and understanding of veterans in American society."
The relative calm of the '80s afforded us the opportunity to explore and discuss the topic of PTSD In fact, a popular song at the time, "19," is one example of this:
As the song explains, almost a decade after the Vietnam War's end, many of its veterans were still battling the consequences of their having fought in it. We need to continue to push to make sure this isn't the fate of our current vets.
The generals (alongside countless others both inside and outside our military organizations, as well as recently returned OEF/OIF veterans themselves) who are coming forward today with their stories and wisdom are doing vital work to change military culture and the stigma of PTSD. The forthrightness will be a balm for current and previous generations of veterans.
What's fascinating is that this work is finally being done even as the wars continue. That is significant. Starting to chip away at this thing from 'the inside' hopefully will have an enormous effect on how we help move our veterans toward resolution.
The sooner understanding of and care for the normal psychological aftershocks is available, the sooner our veterans can focus on the next chapter in their lives.
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Used at Forts Hood and Bliss, Brain Scan Imaging Detects PTSD Sooner, Migraines and PTSD
Acupuncture Today | Weighing the Costs - "Advocates for the integrated approach in the treatment of PTSD at both Ft. Hood and Ft. Bliss were convinced that the traditional methods of treating PTSD weren't long enough in duration, intense enough or comprehensive enough. A program was created that would address all aspects of PTSD and treat the whole soldier. This integrative approach treats many of the symptoms of PTSD that are not addressed through the standard mental health protocols, including cognitive-behavioral therapy and pharmacotherapy. The concept eventually led to the implementation of the Ft. Bliss Restoration & Resilience Center and the Warrior Combat Stress Reset Program at Ft. Hood that incorporated medical massage, meditation, yoga, acupuncture, marital/family therapy and reiki with the standard treatment protocols of cognitive-behavioral and cathartic psychotherapies and pharmacotherapy."
Reuters | Brain scans may detect post-trauma stress sooner - "The scans of 42 U.S. soldiers who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan in the recent past showed that, compared with healthy veterans, those suffering from PTSD had marked differences in some areas of brain activity. The study, presented at the World Psychiatric Association Congress in Italy, suggested identifying certain brain patterns could one day help diagnose PTSD before symptoms appeared and better track treatment, the researchers said."
PTSD Common in Migraine Patients: Study - "Patients with migraine, whether episodic or chronic, are more apt to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than the general population, suggests new research reported in the April issue of Headache. Furthermore, the presence of PTSD in migraineurs is independently associated with greater headache-related disability. 'Taken together, our findings suggest that identification and treatment of PTSD in migraine sufferers is an important and potentially modifiable part of their care that may reduce migraine-related disability and progression to chronic daily headache,' Dr. B. Lee Peterlin and colleagues conclude. In their study of 593 headache patients (mean age 42.2 years; 92% women) with episodic migraine or chronic daily headache, Dr. Peterlin's team found that PTSD was present in 30.3% of those with chronic daily headache and 22.4% of those with episodic migraine. By comparison, approximately 8% of the population is estimated to have PTSD."
While a wide variety of events can trigger what's called post-traumatic stress disorder, this PTSD blog focuses solely on the combat-related variety. As a new generation of warriors returns to civilian life and seeks out resources, PTSD Combat is here to help.
"The first shamans earned their keep in primitave societies by providing explanations and rituals that enabled man to deal with his environment and his personal anguish. Early man, no less than we, dealt with forces that he could not understand or control, and he attempted to come to grips with his vulnerablity by trying to bring order to his universe." -- Richard Gabriel in No More Heroes
"War stories end when the battle is over or when the soldier comes home. In real life, there are no moments amid smoldering hilltops for tranquil introspection. When the war is over, you pick up your gear, walk down the hill and back into the world." -- OIF vet John Crawford in The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell
"After wars' end, soldiers once again become civilians and return to their families to try to pick up where they left off. It is this process of readjustment that has more often than not been ignored by society. -- Major Robert H. Stretch, Ph.D in Textbook of Military Medicine: Vol. 6 Combat Stress
Upcoming Events
Ilona's events are listed in green and found here.
October 22-November 15, 2009 in Milwaukee, WI - Milwaukee Art Museum hosts War, Art, & the Veteran, a display of artworks created by combat veterans.
November 5-11, 2009 in DeKalb, IL - Northern Illinois University Veterans Club hosts a number of Veterans Day events, including its first Veterans Club Community Roundtable and its own Vet Art Project. See Ilona's events and facebook events page for more.
November 25, 2009 in Chicago, IL - Vet Art Project program at the Chicago Cultural Center. See schedule [pdf] for more.
December 9, 2009 in Chicago, IL - Vet Art Project program at the Chicago Cultural Center. See schedule [pdf] for more.
December 6-5, 2009 in Warwick, UK - MindGrad 2009 Warwick Graduate Conference in the Philosophy of Mind. Call for papers deadline: Sept. 1 | Registration.
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Comments at PTSD Combat do not necessarily represent the editor's views. Illegal or inappropriate material will be removed when brought to our attention. The existence of such does not reflect an endorsement by PTSD Combat.
This site contains at times large portions of copyrighted material not specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This material is used for educational purposes, to forward understanding of issues that concern veterans and military families. In accordance with U.S. Copyright Law Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit. More information.
Wisdom. What is it?
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